


Miwataseba

by Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Resident Evil - All Media Types, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Alternate Universe - Normal Life, But Out Of Confusion Born Out Of Ignorance/Immaturity Rather Than Anything Hateful Or Vitriolic, Childhood Memories, Coming Out, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Developing Relationship, F/M, Self-Indulgent, Slice of Life, Some Mild Transphobia, Trans Female Character, Trans Mioda Ibuki, childhood friend romance, not angst, some mild homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23044600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/pseuds/Coffin%20Liqueur
Summary: One of a set of gifts for my best friend's birthday!Once upon a time, two internationally-scoped child geniuses became eccentric penpals, and then wild playmates, and then in more and more ways the people each of them could turn to when they needed to feel"gotten"a little bit.
Relationships: Lucas Baker/Mioda Ibuki
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Punks Never Grow Old - Flynn's Birthday 2020





	1. Hope Outreach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flynn Zephyr (fwynnzies)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwynnzies/gifts).



> Dear Flynn,
> 
> Thank u for shiping my OTP w me
> 
> Love,  
> Dog

It had been called, uuuuuuuh, the REGENERATING HOPE program, or thereabouts. The thing that first got ‘em meeting. He didn’t care to double-check that; he didn’t care to find out whether the Hope’s Peak people still ran it anymore, either.

It’d been a glorified penpal exchange program, anyway. Opt-in for the parents of genius kids Hope’s Peak had scoped out internationally. Simple shit under the banner of a corny slogan about teaching kids early to reach out into the future blah blah foster true hope blahdi-blah-blah. ‘Course Mom and Dad woulda gone right for signing him up - put him on some kinda weird ritualistic regimen for makin’ friends. Which was stupid, because friends are supposed to be a thing you wanna have, right? Heh - way to make it all screwy with all that letter-writing obligation crap.

Boy howdy, could he remember it havin’ been a chore when he first started on the thing. Fortunately for him, quality apparently weren’t a focus of the clowns runnin’ the program, anyway. He wondered how the hell kids did get their first and second and whatever assignments - you had to have X number of letter-writing buddies before you could pick one to stick with, not like that’d stop anybody from keepin’ on writing for the fun of it. Mostly, he wondered because, heh… there sure had been no accounting for taste. He’d gone through a long string of your usual boring kids. They came in with their letters of “hello, my name is so-and-so, I go to insert-school-here, my talent is some stupid shit like soccer or history or counting money and I live with a mommy and daddy, nice to meet you” milk toast, Lucas would show ‘em pictures of his inventions and bugs and bones he found in the swamp and tell ‘em about the kid he wanted to set on fire for cutting in the lunch line… and they’d ignore it, at best. Say they don’t understand how inventions work, or be all goody-goody and tell him he shouldn’t say or send whatever.

That was until he got matched to Ibuki.

Little boy from Japan his age - just a month younger. Pegged as a junior Ultimate in music class.

Lucas still had all o’ those old letters - looked back on them sometimes, when he wanted to refresh his memory on a joke, or prove that  _ nahhhhhhh, remember? That happened then, not then! _

Ibuki hadn’t been a buttoned-up goody-goody when they’d swapped intros. Nah. Ibuki?

_ That  _ kid had had personality. His English had kinda been crap at the time, but what the hell - Lucas got a few laughs outta that. Plus having gotten in return that  _ he  _ talked  _ “funny” _ . But nah, point was, it’d felt like actually  _ talking  _ to someone, for once. Ibuki was all lively, and didn’t try to play arm-of-the-Man like the rest a’ the kids. Lucas could actually say shit in those letters. Share anything he wanted. Describe his new inventions. Share pictures of dead things.

Ibuki would say that they were so, so cool. Would bet that  _ Lucas-kun  _ could probably make… insert some wild-fuckin’-weapon or transportation device or flashy structure here - to be fair, Lucas hadn’t thought that the suggestions sounded stupid back then, and to be even fairer, hell, he didn’t now - science sure had been marching in new and mysterious directions, eh. Ibuki would share pictures, too, of things like a weird bone he found outside, or a scary bug that had bit his finger while he caught it for a photo - taped down next to a doodled representation of the incident, complete with an “:O”-face and a dialogue cloud of symbols Lucas didn’t know, back then. (He’d long since learned to read it - “ITAI!!!”)

In one letter, Lucas mentioned that he’d gone to the doctor for a special appointment - got his head scanned and didn’t know what it was for.

Ibuki responded with his customary everything-is-great and asked if it could be that his parents wanted to see his smartness. He lamented that he didn’t know whether to ask his mom and dad to take him in for the same kind of test - accompanied by doodles once again, of Lucas… and himself sitting in chairs with their heads attached to TVs. The one attached to Lucas showed a bunch of gobbledygook he had somehow interpreted as machinery as a kid. Attached to Ibuki was a screen of sloppy musical notes.

Lucas mentioned that stupid fuckin’ (he hadn’t used that word at the time, obviously) Oliver Thwaite (Oliver Twist, Oliver Twit, Oliver Tit, Oliver -- heh…! Oliver  _ Twat…! _ ) had, after that, begun calling him a crazyhead.

‘N he told Ibuki, he told him about the plan he’d cooked up. How he was gonna trick the little bastard into coming over to play, and then get him in the attic, and shut him in there with a remote all smart and clever-like because he was so super-de-duper smart, and leave ‘im there to cry forever for being a jerk. He’d smiled as he’d finished that message, and folded it up, and sealed it in the envelope. Good idea, huh…?

And then Ibuki’s next response had come a little bit early. By proxy.

In the form of Mama bringin’ up - like it was the cutest thing in the world. Apparently, Mrs. Mioda had said - Ibuki had asked her if they could call Lucas - so he could make him feel better by singing him a  _ cool  _ song he’d wrote to cheer him up.

He’d ended up needing to settle for sending a cassette in the mail. It was all simple one-or-two instrument stuff, ranging from guitar to shit like ringin’ on half-filled glasses and kicking a container here and there, but it was all good shit, for how old they were. The lyrics were in Japanese, but Ibuki’d explained what they meant in another letter, at least. Lucas had, figuratively, nodded approvingly - felt good to talk to another person who could make stuff that was worth a damn in terms of being  _ fun _ , creative.

Even if he’d ever been a reflective man, or one more consequence-minded, Lucas would not have truly been able to understand that without the distraction he’d had at around this time, his life would have turned out way, way differently.

But a distraction, it sure had been.

Soon, every one of Ibuki’s letters'd started coming with a new cassette. Was all the more for them to bounce off of together. One day, Ibuki’s cassette had come in busted during travel. After fuckin’ kicking the wall with a couple of angry-ass boyish grunts a couple of times - followed by a good ol’ palm slam - ‘cause he’d been looking forward to it like he’d look forward to any new surprise box, dammit, Lucas wrote back bluntly that that was what had happened. In a fit a’ sour-grapes-ness, he'd also jotted down hard and dark and jaggedly that the sound quality on Ibuki’s tapes sucked, anyway. Too bad he weren’t in Japan with him so he could fix it.

Alongside sending a re-recording of his set - plus the  _ new  _ one he wanted to share - Ibuki had agreed.

_ But Lucas-kun is coming to Japan soon, right? _

_ I can’t wait to go to Hope’s Peak Academy so you can fix my tape recorder and I can play my music for you LIVE!!! _

Doodle of Ibuki standing on a circle with his fist in the air, a mouth shaped like a “D”, an outline of squiggly musical notes, and a guitar in his hand. Overhead diagonal lines indicated spotlights. A li’l ol’ doodle-Lucas stood behind the circle, drawn “shorter”, looking up at Ibuki with just the same face.

Lucas had smiled at that at first.

Buddy'd had a point.

... Then it had bent hard into a scowl on a low-flare of something  _ hot  _ in his chest and the front of his forehead.

Then he’d thrown the letter aside with a snap of the wrist, hurled himself backwards onto his bed with a  _ whump _ , and put his palms to his face and doubled into them and  _ groaned  _ \- little shoes hammerin’ at the floor where they still touched the ground.

He couldn’t goddamn wait, either.

And, as ever, he fuckin’ told Ibuki as much.

_ It’s STUPID that we don’t get to go for such a long time! _

A sloppy, exaggerated doodle of himself, mouth open to yell a little paper yell and winding up a fist to punch two stick figures.

_ I hate it here!!! The ONLY fun things I get to do around this freaking house are work on my inventions, play with my puzzles and my games (and I can’t play anything now because my sister is a sore loser), and look for things in the swamp. WHY DON’T I GET TO HAVE FRIENDS TOO?!?!?!?!?!?! _

Come a month later, and at the breakfast table, Mama’s telling him that the Mioda family were planning to come to America to visit. If the Bakers would have them, of course.

First word o’ that, and Lucas had jumped up in his seat wide-eyed and pounded both fists on the table.

He hadn’t recalled any time he’d ever been so goddamn excited before. He hadn’t been able to stop runnin’ around and humming to himself as he went hard at work cookin’ up something new to show off when the visit happened. He’d gotten a couple a’ reprimands from Jack for making a ruckus, but even that old bastard couldn’t bear to be insistent about it, certainly not enough to smack ‘im - he’d done what he and Mama’d wanted; he’d actually made a friend.

Heh… he sure hoped that he and Ibuki’d gotten the motherfucker regretting some stuff once Ibuki did come to town.

It hadn’t been much of a family visit, exactly. Mr. and Mrs. Mioda stayed the first night, then left the next few days on some kinda business in New Orleans; they were well-to-do. Mama seemed to feel a bit bad about it - them dumpin’ their kid for an extended sleepover with fairly little fanfare.

But oh,  _ how  _ Lucas and Ibuki did not give a single  _ damn _ .

Not from the moment Ibuki first stepped through that door behind his mom and dad, a perky smile on his face under thick-black-tousled hair and a guitar case slung over his back.

Lucas had frozen in place - big ol’ eyes wide even by their standards. Mouthing an  _ ooooh  _ and feelin’ the front of his brain light up. It had felt… pretty much exactly like getting to see that one favorite animal you ain’t ever but read about before for real in the zoo.

_ Friend. _

Once Ibuki looked him in the face, he got the same look.

And then his smile had curved back in and deeper; his teeth had parted and he had fucking sprinted at Lucas, coming in a dead stop in front of him, hopping up and down, hands in tight fists, squealing greetings.

Ibuki had been happy to see him.

Downright  _ thrilled _ , even.

And it had made  _ his  _ trap open to smile just as big; it’d put a humming tickle in his chest.

While Mrs. Mioda had polite-laughed and apologized that Ibuki was such a lively child, Lucas had dizzily-tipped between a million suggestions on what they should start playin’ first, and been neatly beaten to the punch as Ibuki’d grabbed his arm and tugged him to the foyer table, swearing that he’d been waiting  _ too long _ to sing  _ this song _ in front of him for real.

From the general show-and-tell session that’d turned into forward, it hadn’t felt like playtime ever ended during those few days. Sometimes, it was more show-and-tell, or collaboration - Lucas sitting and watching and listening or trying to provide creative acoustics as Ibuki strummed or played that piano in the bedroom, the two cackling with scrunched noses and teeth bared taking turns improvising stupid fucking lyrics; Ibuki looming over Lucas’s shoulder while he tried to make some simple robot or another, Lucas feeling that limelight nice and warm as, performatively, all while lookin’ at the other kid through the corner of his eye, he would show off with what pieces he had - not just trottin’ out how  _ so smart! _ he was with quick-and-dirty explanations of how this does that but with surprising Ibuki with what things he could make spark, or what color the flames of certain chemicals were when they burned.

Sometimes, it was trudgin’ out through the swamp - old stompin’ grounds feeling new when you got someone to  _ talk about _ them with, and who agrees that the same features of it are  _ cool _ , and with whom you can encourage each other to keep probin’ at those features just a little further. First, it was just showin’ him around, all of Lucas’s favorite spots, and the like. Quickly, they got to heading out with jars and tupperwares and challenges between ‘em to see who could catch the most bugs, or the rarest bugs, by their little-kid perception of “the  _ coolest-looking _ one’s gotta be the rarest”. They’d managed to see a small gator on the third day - been in the middle of a scheme to lure it outta the water and take turns baiting it so they could, likewise, take turns touching it when Mama’d called them in to start washing up for dinner, getting ‘em freezing up with ears proverbially pricked like spooked cats.

Sometimes, it was just your good ol’ romping. Simple horseplay that’d escalate into play-chasing each other down the halls of that great big house while hollering at the tops of their lungs, playing impromptu games of hide-and-seek that ended when the hider jumped out with a big n’ booming “BOO!”. Breakin’ out the board games or the papers and colored pencils or the plain-and-simple toys, whether store-bought or “modified”, in little lulls between the action and bursts in their creative or youngster-rowdy energy. Zoe joined ‘em on occasion, but mostly just when Mama or Jack nudged ‘em to let her, and it suited Lucas just fine that, pff, he guessed she’d realized she wasn’t particularly wanted, in his book; seemed like an especially shitty context in which to have to  _ share _ . Ibuki was  _ his  _ friend. Not hers.

Those were the, eh…  _ essentials _ , anyway.

‘Cause those visits became annual. Got longer and longer, too. And they grew with them. And as the middleman got hacked away at in their letter-swapping by Lucas refusing to pipe down till his family got the internet and Ibuki’s family soon following suit, they became increasingly…  _ natural _ . Familiar.

Neither of them was isolated, a fact which Lucas had the luxury of underrating. In the long stretches between Ibuki’s visits, they shared stories faster. Into the night, sometimes, too, when Lucas could sneak it - heh; it’s the little things, little  _ adventures in the night _ included. Heck a lotta that time, speaking of, was spent usin’ that space that the World Wide open Web gave him to try to catch up a little bit with Ibuki on music. Have more to talk about, swap tracks. Un-shockingly, he gravitated towards the kinda not-old-person-crap shit the Mom and Dad would consider noise. Or un-Christian or whateverthefuck stiffs like them would think.

Seemed both he and Ibuki’d quickly started developing a taste for that kinda shit. Made sense. It was adventurous and loud-and-proud and thumpin’-like-a-heart and whatever-the-hell it wanted to be. Shied away from nothing, including being where the noise ones.

Unlike Dulvey, when Ibuki wasn’t around.

Ibuki and a good time and hell of a round of laughs had come to be just a little reach away, during the whole damn winter-of-boredom that the shit town was. And then Ibuki would come around to… bring a summer, or some corny crap like that. Of laughs and fireworks and fun.

That much promise and that much to make the sucky stuff tolerable’d also kept it from burning him up that bad when Hope’s Peak had found a new first-draft pick for their upcoming Ultimate Inventor.

Don’t get him wrong, though; he’d still sneered and held a furious caterwauling scream behind his teeth as he looked the chick up, light from his computer screening reflecting off and off and off his eyes in the dark of the attic to a strobelight intensity, facial muscles twisting and twisting taut and aching around screws. Lucas may have had awards and shelves and shelves of shit showin’ off just how much he could do with goddamn nothing, but nooooo - this girl had already had  _ patents _ .

Fuckin’  _ products _ .

_ Prestige _ .

Of  _ course  _ the stupid school had had their eye on her all of a sudden. Of course pickin’ her would make them look all  _ important _ .

He’d almost literally put his goddamn  _ fist  _ through the wall. He’d sulked all goddamn day.

And Ibuki had, un-fucking-shockingly, known just what to say.

He’d looked at a message from him with dull eyes.

_ Ughhhhhhhh no… (;﹏;) That means that I’m gonna have to go to America to hang out all the time like we wanted to! _

...and then... 

Smirked wearily. Typed, eyes still dull and feelin’ bleary,  _ You better. _

Wasn’t sure how much of a joke he’d meant it as.

But he’d known that in either case, Ibuki wouldn’t have minded if he had, in fact, meant that as maaaaaaaybe a teensy bit of a demand.

_ I have to! >:( _ , Ibuki had typed.  _ I’m gonna need a lot of cool stuff made for my concerts when I become a rock star, and you’re the only inventor who knows everything I like!!! _

And then, after a pause, he’d added:  _ You get my vision!!! _

The  _ dullness  _ over Lucas’s face had melted; let his face warm and thaw out enough for his nose to crinkle over a teeth-baring eyes-squinted snicker.

_ Why, thank you _ , had been, essentially, the thought runnin’ in a nice roarin’ burn behind it.

A good bit of respect and acknowledgement of his abilities when he coulda used, from someone being, as ever, good at delivering on what he’d reckoned he was being shortchanged on.

_ ‘Least someone still knows who should get to be their top inventor. _

Gratifying and soothing to have someone thinking, honest-to-god, that he was the best.

He’d sure known as well that not only would Ibuki not have minded a bit about the whole yeah, you’d better, if anyone would, Ibuki’d be able to pull off, uhhhhhhh,  _ achieving  _ on that front. Ibuki’d always been like him: if he’d actually wanted to do something, then you’d damn well believe he’d figure out a way to go on and  _ git it _ .

But till then, Ibuki’s visits had continued without increasing.

And they’d done so pretty damn painlessly, ‘cause they’d stopped talking about Hope’s Peak. It’d ceased to be another of their things anymore - just a bridge to be crossed when it was come to.

But the whole substance of the visits had, again, started growin’ up with them. Plenty to talk about and look forward to all the same.

Top of their usual, they’d started talking about ever-bigger and ever-better prospects. Careers. Dreams.

And, inevitably-soon, they’d begun talking about girls.


	2. Girls

Heh…

... _ Man _ , had Lucas and Ibuki getting up to the talking-about-girls age together been hell of a thrill when it’d happened.

They’d always been a couple a’ rebels, but this point in their life? Was at this point in their life that Lucas had started feeling like he’d been becoming a grown-up for the first time. And havin’ someone right there doing the same thing and talking about it all with you was having… someone to agree with you on that. Someone to corroborate with you.

It weren’t just all for the obvious reasons, neither - what realizing the capacity to go and appreciate and take a fresh curiosity in all that physical stuff meant, on the just-facts pragmatic level.

It was ‘cause of a sense of  _ taboo  _ about it all. Of  _ no-one-can-stop-us _ .

Mom and Dad definitely wouldn’t have appreciated hearing Lucas use the word  _ “tits” _ when chattin’ with Ibuki.  _ Tits. Ta-tas. Titties. Boobies -  _ Ibuki thought that ‘un especially fun to say. _ Jugs -  _ Lucas liked that one. There moments the two o’ them ran down a goddamn list of _ gasp! So bad, so dirty _ words.

Mom and Dad would’ve even less appreciated Ibuki sneaking shit like fashion mags and risque comics over on his stays.

But nah, that’d become another mainstay a’ those visits - another mainstay activity, likewise, becoming sneaking peeks and giggling at that shit and how oh-so-bad the two of ‘em were in between Mama’s pops in and out of the room with snacks. After they were done gettin’ their fill of ogling photos of pretty ladies and drawings of balloon-boobs, and of gettin’ to enjoy how clever they were for managing to ogle photos of pretty ladies under a roof like Lucas’s family’s, Ibuki would slip his softcore middle-schooler porn back into his bag - or his pillowcase, if they were crashin’ right after that. The hours or minutes before actually-crashing had by then, inevitably, come to involve talkin’ about the pretty girls at their schools, some nights.

One night, though, it’d also involved a question.

Ibuki had let out... one of those laughs that clearly ain’t about anything funny. Lucas had always been occasionally prone to those, himself - somewhere between randomly and when shit was just too quiet.

Ibuki’d never usually been like that. When Ibuki just… had an impulse, or was bored o’ the silence, he’d typically sung, or hummed, or whistled.

When he laughed like that, it’d always been more of a placeholder.

Lucas had turned his head sideways on his pillow to face him, a downward-slant to his mouth and an upward-one to his browline. “Yeah?” he’d asked.

Ibuki’s head had been ‘bout halfway turned to look back at Lucas - was doin’ the rest in the corner of his eyes. Eyebrows roofed and furrowed over ‘em.  _ “Smiling.” _

Lucas had popped his eyes and jerked an upward-nod at him. Yeah? Go ahead, already...!

“Do, eh,” he’d started - voice quaverin’ and waverin’ with a fringe of nervous laughter. “...you think… you woulda gone out with  _ me  _ if…  _ I  _ was a girl?”

Lucas had arched his eyebrow higher.

And Ibuki had shaken his head before shifting, laying to face the ceiling. Mouth opened in… another one of those laughs. “...You know… just as a total what-if?”

Aaaaaand Lucas had scoffed. ‘Cause it’d been  _ funny _ , mind. He hadn’t been able to imagine any reason Ibuki woulda asked him something like that, and so it had been a silly question.

On Ibuki’s part, he had tried to remedy that - head snappin’ to the side facing Lucas directly, now; Lucas had wriggled to rest propped-up on an elbow as Ibuki had come in with… yet another of  _ those laughs _ , corner of his smile twitchy in his cheeks. “ _ Whaaaaat? _ ” he’d play-whined. “Don’t  _ you  _ ever think about whether you’d be hot as a girl...?”

Bringin’ Lucas from scoffing to outright giggling. “ _ Heeeeell,  _ **_naw!_ ** ” he’d oil-bubbled out, teeth showin’ down to their gums. Asked Ibuki what he’d do that for.  _ ‘Cause you just wonder about things sometimes _ , Ibuki had said.

Lucas hadn’t been able to argue with that.

And so he’d… readily drifted into conceding an answer. Face going blank and eyes driftin’ up toward the ceiling.

“Uhhhhh, I guess I  _ would…? _ ” he’d said.

Not entirely sure why the answer had been so vague.

Probably because he hadn’t been sure how to picture the scenario.

But, when he tried…

“‘Mean -- you’d still like all the same stuff you like, right?” he’d… half-asked, half-explained. Face still blank and round-eyed as he turned it back down to Ibuki - mayhaps… half-consciously inviting him to confirm or deny. Flailed a vague, general spinning wave through the air. “And we’d still get along, and stuff. ‘N we’re already best friends.” A pause -- and then a short, confined few shakes of the head that’d rattled something else in place gettin’ him thinking that explanation was… sufficient.

Allowin’ him to cap it off with another sizzly scoff and a pull to a toothy smirk.

“ _ No homo _ , though,” he’d said as his  _ grand consclusion _ .

Floppin’ down back onto the bed with a thump and a minute grunt.

Ibuki’d laughed. Small, but it hadn’t sounded so hyena-y as the one he’d opened the question with. Then he’d shifted a couple times and pulled his blanket two-handed up to a chin under a big happy smile.

And Lucas had gone to sleep that night wonderin’ what he himself would, in fact, look like as a girl.

‘Cause it was true - a fella did just wonder about things sometimes.

He really had taken Ibuki at his word - read into it no further than thinking about the  _ would you date me _ part. Maybe Ibuki’d just been tired of not having a girlfriend, he’d thought - and in that case, the question had still been silly; he’d known Lucas had barely ever gotten to talk to girls, either.

Was less that he hadn’t  _ thought  _ about it when li’l things about Ibuki started to change than that he genuinely hadn’t really noticed.

Hadn’t had any cause to.

Was focused on more  _ important  _ shit when it came to Ibuki. More  _ fun  _ shit.

He’d noticed when Ibuki’d gotten his ears pierced, and that had been about it, for a while. He’d been jealous, wished he coulda done it, too. Was nice and rock-and-roll - but no-how would Mom and Dad be lettin’ their  _ boy  _ wear jewelry.  _ Especially  _ not to be  _ metal _ .

He hadn’t noticed the hairclips - pink and blue - tuckin’ half his bangs behind an ear. Was especially tricky  _ to  _ notice it when they’d come off and on, at first. Hadn’t noticed the times Ibuki had turned up with painted nails or eyeliner - ‘cause all of that had always gone with those pierced ears, he figured, in the little flash-moments where he thought back on it.

When Mom and Dad had started giving Ibuki looks - begun talking  _ to  _ him less and more  _ about  _ him, using Lucas as a middleman; hell, even  _ Mama’d _ begun acting that way - ...he hadn’t even thought about  _ that _ .

Not in any kinda way that pointed to… what it had actually meant, anyways.

Lucas had  _ assumed  _ for the longest goddamn time that they’d started actin’ all of that way, too, because Ibuki’d just become too  _ rock-and-roll _ for them.

And truth be told, he’d been jealous.

For no truly bigger or better reason than that he’d always wanted to have the freedom to  _ piss his parents off more. _ To  _ become  _ more.

He’d laughed about as  _ “wistfully” _ as he coulda  _ ever  _ been capable of. Telling Ibuki all o’ that shit - in his own words.

“I ain’t wantin’ to look like all --  _ flashy _ , or nothing like that,” he’d said, “‘n yet I’m still wishin’ I could  _ get away _ with lookin’ how you look.”

Ibuki had looked uncharacteristically uncertain, with his face turned to him. His mouth’d been bent in the clear bow of a frown, eyes large but brow knit.

Lucas had frowned back. Squinted, tilted his head. “... -- Like however I  _ wanna  _ look,” he’d said. Shaken out his head. “Without the old guy actin’ like he gets to be the boss of me over it.”

A tilt of his head and a harder squint.

_ Get it? _

Ibuki had paused - but then laughed, nice and Ibuki-like, all big and hearty with his mouth wide-open and the noises bloomin’ as if from a megaphone. He’d said something about how, _ well, of course! Getting to look however you want is part of living the dream! _

They’d both seemed satisfied with that.

Looking back on it, eh…

Lucas guessed Ibuki hadn’t  _ wanted  _ him to question anything.

While it wouldn’t’ve ever been like him to tiptoe around or hide shit in any kinda  _ chicken  _ way, Ibuki  _ had  _ always had it in him to be sneaky. And to “cut corners” so’s he didn’t have to  _ explain  _ crap before just  _ going _ .

After all, it couldn’t’a really been said that he was trying to hide anything on the visit that he finally showed up at the manor in a pink hoodie, hair that’d only been growin’ out longer and longer tied back, declaring with a bright smile and a wave - hand hidden in a floppy sleeve - that  _ Ibuki’s here! _

He’d kept talking like that, too.  _ Ahh, Ibuki just got into this new band - the riff on this first track will  _ **_melt your bones and drain ‘em out through your ears_ ** _. Urgh… Ibuki’s gonna starve if we don’t go back inside for some grub! Heyyyyyy, bro, would Ibuki lie to you? _

When asked, Ibuki’d explained that it sounds better in Japanese. Sounds fun and… 

...Cute.

At the very least, that there was the moment Lucas had stopped… not thinkin’ about it.

The moment he started thinkin’ Ibuki’s gradual makeover hadn’t just been about rock-and-roll.

Never had he really known Ibuki to talk about cuteness except in women.

By the time Ibuki’d left on that trip, he’d half-formed the thought that Ibuki was gay, ‘cause how was he supposed to know how that worked. He wasn’t gay.

But then that didn’t check out, he didn’t reckon, after all the shit they’d shot about their favorite girls. So, swung both ways.

Had seemed like it was all functionally the same to Mom and Dad.

They’d noticed he’d been thinking ever since Ibuki headed back out to Japan.

Their talking about him had quickly begun a gradual series of upticks.

Giving Lucas wistful-ass smiles, patting him on the back (ew don’t touch him they knew he didn’t like being touched) and saying… What was the word? Sagely? Saying and nodding sagely - like it’d been sad news and not, in Lucas’s book,  _ strange  _ news - that they’d “had a talk with Mr. and Mrs. Mioda - Ibuki’s…  _ goin’ _ through some things right now.”

More point-blank, on at least one occasion, “It’s lookin’ like now, Ibuki might  _ like boys _ ”.

He realized now.

That could’ve been, yeah,  _ part of _ what Ibuki’d been trying to convey to him with that one question a while back.

But he didn’t know yet, come to think of it, if Ibuki did like boys, so…

...Jury was out.

‘Cause once again, he’d realized the actual goddamn point when Ibuki had stopped bein’ ambiguous.

Inevitably, Ibuki’d gotten into the practice of posting heckovalot of music online. Updated profiles and stuff often, too.

On every page Lucas damn well remembered being Ibuki-related, the bio text had come to refer to Ibuki as a  _ she _ , not a  _ he _ .

Except that had been gradual, too, he realized - one page here that he chalked up to typos. Then another that he’d forgotten had not, in fact, been the page he’d already seen.

Sometimes, a fella just wonders, and sometimes he reaches just past that point into auto-theorizing and patching those theories right onto the way things are so he can move on to thinkin’ about the next thing.

And what he’d come to start thinking about off and on since now - the first day of Ibuki’s next visit - was that if Mom and Dad were actin’ like it was a funeral just thinkin’ about how their son’s best friend might be a gay, what a field day they’d have if they found out their son’s best friend might be wantin’ a sex change.

Lucas had already never seen Ibuki so damn on-edge before than at dinner that night - gettin’ talked too too-softly and too-seldomly by Mom and Dad, looked at with pitying eyes. While Zoe tried conversation, pff… seemed shy. Stiff.

What the fuck was your problem, Zoe? Worried how Mom and Dad felt about your fraternizing, goody-two-shoes? Eh?

...All of that leavin’ Ibuki constantly switching side-to-side glances. Wiggling and pulling twitchy smiles and pushing food in laps around a good ol’ dinner-plate drunken-turtle racetrack.

...Even Lucas hadn’t had much to say.

Too busy watching. Thinkin’ till the steam of heavy-metal gears churning and chugging and banging made his head burn hard.

It… just  _ motherfucking goddamn wasn’t fair _ , he thought.

Mind, he’d never much had the sense of perspective to know how to even begin to question when something wasn’t fair to someone else. Or even what that’d really mean. He minded himself.

But this, he could certainly determine just so happened to not at all be fair to him, either.

Ibuki had been the one friend he’d gotten growing up.

And Ibuki had been perfect.

The one person who hadn’t been dull as shit, or try to get  _ something else _ out of him. They’d always treated each other as things to chase and enjoy and elevate the joy of most anything together with - not as things to control.

Or, for that matter, correct.

But now, Ibuki was unacceptable.

For Lucas to have friends was unacceptable.

For Lucas to be  _ gotten  _ was unacceptable.

For Lucas to  _ get what he wanted _ was unacceptable.

And for Lucas, nah. Nahhhhh, nah, nah.

All of that was unacceptable. Wouldn’t let it fly.

He would show ‘em. And he would show Ibuki.

...He sure as hell was gonna keep Ibuki.

Getting down to sleep that night… seemed like neither of them had been tired, already.

But that Ibuki’d been sharp enough to catch Lucas staring - narrow-eyed and scanning, looking for the girl in a face he’d grown up interpreting as a boy’s. Beginning to think he saw it in the eyes, and smiles before the face he was studying whipped around to face him.

Those eyes blinkin’ wide in questioning.

“Somethin’ up?” Ibuki asked.

“Tomorrow,” Lucas said. Rough, heated, vocally blow-whispered, after he’d spent all night cooking this thought. “Sunset, ‘fore supper…” Eyes pressing narrow. He leaned in closer. All as if delivering a secret. “You wanna go on a… -- oooon a date -- ?”

Ibuki’s mouth dropped open. Eyes flicked right. Left. Center. Brows roofed; head turned sideways. “...Howwwwwww do you mean…?”

“A date.” Lucas shut his eyes in a hard flinch - think - baring his upper row of teeth. Shook out his head. How do I clear up a question like that. “We’ll steal Dad’s boat -- I can take you farther out on the swamp.” He nodded his head aside, eyes now circle-like with searching uncertainty, and jabbed a hand out into the room - just to indicate out - before coming back to center. “...It’ll be like a date…!”

...He blinked a few rapid fluttery times very deliberately to accentuate the look he knew he was wearing. Furrowing his brow and thinning his lips and leaning in just a tad further. Well…?!

It was slow.

Partway-sped-up-footage-of-a-flower-like.

But everything about Ibuki seemed to goddamn rise.

Sitting up, and up, and up. Mouth-corners pulling into cheeks pulling up into upper eyelids.

Pff... looked like the goddamn Little Mermaid.

“But -- but -- !” Ibuki half-stammered deliberately, Lucas could tell. Was fringed with a giggle. “...Whatever happened to ‘no homo’...?!”

Weren’t just fringed with a giggle on that last part. It dripped with it.

Lucas grimaced. C’mon, Ibuki, don’t laugh at me right now…!

“ _ Weeeeell _ , it ain’t  _ homo  _ if you wanna be a  **_girl_ ** now, is it?!” he said - just barely within indoor voice, forgetting to modulate. He shook his head out - some scattered pressing of insistence. “Whaddyou say? I wanna go out with you!”

No pause before Ibuki threw herself forward and hugged him while _ cackle-cackle-cackling _ to high heaven.

And he stayed put still - still saucer-eyed and slack-jawed. A faint consistent  _ bzzzzzzzz… _ in his nerves.

He didn’t hate it, he realized; didn’t even dislike it.

But it was uncanny. Unfamiliar.

...Except that Ibuki was happy again.

...He smiled over an under-burn in his face, insides suddenly feeling hotly restful.

_ I done good. _

_...And everything is just the way it oughta be again. _

...Was probably a miracle that if nothing else, Mom and Dad gave no sign in the mornin’ of having heard their noise level pick up toward the tail-end of their agreement.

Evening came. They went out boating.

And it was an evening full of laughter, bad singing, and shitty jokes. Lookin’ for new spots they hadn’t seen before, spotting for bugs and alligators.

Pffheh - looked like he’d been right: a girl Ibuki loved all the same shit that a boy one loved.

Only difference was that, in his opinion, a girl Ibuki looked better.

...Made everything else around her look that much better, too, damn.

‘Ey, maybe it was the knowledge that it was a date, and maybe it was the fact that many of the places they cruised were spots they rarely made it out to, but everything seemed… brighter. Freer. More special.

Old favorites becoming newly special with, really, very little change at all.


End file.
